


No Star Shines Alone

by meridian_rose (meridianrose)



Category: Midnight Texas (TV)
Genre: ALL THE FRIENDSHIPS, Community: 100_tales, F/M, I haven't seen episode 8 yet, Stargazing, alternate ending to episode 7, and maybe more - Freeform, not episode 8 compliant, not pro Creek/Manfred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-29 02:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12072921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/pseuds/meridian_rose
Summary: Alternate episode 7 ending. Manfred is planning on leaving. Olivia has other ideas.





	No Star Shines Alone

"Where are you going?"

Manfred shrugged, refusing to meet Olivia's gaze. "Just for a drive."

"Sure." Her disbelief was plain.

He sighed, stepped back to the ground and turned to face Olivia. He leaned on the RV. "I need to get out of town."

"Why?"

He gestured to the house. "Creek. She broke up with me."

Olivia folded her arms. She was dressed all in black save her red leather jacket. "Of course she did. You might not want to hear this but I've been expecting it for a long time. You're too different, you and her, and not in a complementary fashion."

Manfred looked away. "I thought this time would be different."

"The town is. Midnight is different from anywhere else. But Creek is the same as a million other small town girls. If you wanted it to be special that was to give you a good excuse to stay." Olivia tipped her head. "I guess you think love, or lust, is a good excuse. Your duty, your friends, they mean nothing."

He scoffed, raised his eyes to the sky. "I'm no chosen one."

"If you accepted it without question and tried bossing me about I'd agree. That you're aware of the responsibility and not eager to take it on makes me more amenable to the idea." Olivia stepped forward and Manfred tensed.

However the hand that came to rest on his shoulder was gentle, not a firm grip as he'd expected. He thought she might have tried to physically drag him back inside and she was probably capable of it.

"You have us, Manfred. You have me. We care. God, I can't believe you'd run away from everyone over a break-up. You've been with her five minutes, it's over, deal with it. The worst part is she moved in before she dumped you. I can have words with her, make her get out of your house."

God, she was serious. "No…"

"Did you even pack?"

"I barely unpacked." Always ready to run on some level.

Olivia pushed past him, climbing into the RV. "Come on then."

"What? Where are we going?"

She put on her seatbelt. "Wherever you were about to head off to."

"You can't just leave."

"If you can, so can I."

Manfred shook his head. "What about Lem?"

"I often have to go away for business. He'll understand. I’ll send him a text message." She pulled out her phone, tapped at it for a moment.

She didn’t understand. "I'm not coming back."

"Whatever." Olivia slid her phone back into her pocket. "Come on. Are we running away or not?"

 

It was dark when they pulled over. Manfred was not surprised by Olivia's efficiency in building a fire so they could sit outside the van. Lounging in the deck chairs, they drank a beer, enjoying the silence for a while.

The moon drifted in and out of the clouds, stars twinkling high above them. Without any light pollution the night sky was far more beautiful than in a city or even a small town.

"My grandmother told me to go to Midnight to hide from Hightower," Manfred said apropos of nothing.

"That didn't work out so well."

"Do you think Joe's right? That my ending up in Midnight was part of my destiny?" He laughed. "Destiny. I don’t believe in such a thing. I think we have free will."

Olivia took a long swallow of beer. "Maybe destiny is something you should do, but having free will means you have a choice. But if you turn away from it, your life will be dramatically different."

Manfred sighed.

"Won't you miss anything about Midnight?" Olivia tipped her head, blond hair cascading over the side of the chair.

"Sure. Compared to most of you I feel normal.” He was only half-joking. “And Fiji –" Manfred broke off, swigged from the bottle. "I'll miss her cookies."

Olivia rolled her eyes. "It's all right to miss people. Not just what they do for you. That's a hard lesson to learn, I know. It's difficult to trust people, to let them into your life. Harder still to admit it. But it's too late to pretend you haven't come to care about us."

Manfred shook his head, fixed his gaze on the cloud above him which looked like a dragon's head. "Fine. I'll miss Fiji. And Bobo. Emilio. Lem. Madonna – and yes, especially Madonna's cooking. Joe, despite his insistence that I'm some sort of hero. Chuy. And even you."

Olivia gave a soft laugh. "You didn't mention her."

The name wasn’t necessary. "She broke up with me."

"You can still miss her."

The clouds shifted in the cool breeze. The dragon was replaced by a plate piled high with potatoes.

"It feels different, now I'm away from her. Maybe that's why I always run." Places and people were often interconnected for him. To leave a place was to leave behind the people and experiences that had hurt him.

"Maybe the distance gives you perspective."

He agreed, waved one hand at the sky. "Being somewhere new is exciting. Like the stars, shiny and full of possibilities. Then the clouds move in. And when it rains, I move on. I've never discovered how to suffer through the storm. It's never been worth getting wet…"

"Keep going," Olivia urged softly.

"I thought Creek was a star and then she broke up with me and became a cloud…this metaphor is getting clumsy.” Manfred frowned. “I'm lost without her, or I thought I was. But I'm looking at that cloud and it reminds me of Thursdays at 'Home Cooking', and I can't help think that Bobo would mock this beer but drink two of them before he brought out his preferred brand to share with me. I can hardly bear to think of never seeing him or Fiji again. I'm thinking that Lem will be up and wondering where you are, and what wise thing he'd say about me disappearing without a word."

Olivia dropped the empty bottle to the desert sand and got to her feet. "Why didn't you even say goodbye?"

"Because I'm a coward," Manfred said, draining his own bottle. "Because you'd try to talk me out of it. People would say things like 'we need you' and I don't know how to handle that. Or 'we'll miss you' and…" He blinked away unexpected tears, let the bottle fall to the floor.

Olivia crouched down, her hands on his knees. "Come back home," she said. "You don't need her but we do need you. And even if we didn't need you, we would miss you. Not me of course."

Her flippancy made him stare at her, shocked.

She took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it. "Oh, Manfred," she said and laughed, "I don't mean it. Of course I'd miss you. I'm just teasing. I like to tease."

He swallowed. Keep going or turn back. The balance was tipping towards Midnight and Olivia and the others, but the weight of his responsibilities was still heavy. "What if I fail?"

Olivia smiled, grasping his concern as if she was reading his mind. "You won't. Because you won't do it alone. You're not the only star in the sky Manfred, to borrow your clumsy metaphor. Maybe you're Sirius, the brightest star, but remember you're part of a whole constellation. No star shines alone. No cloud can overwhelm us for long."

Manfred put his other hand over Olivia's, four hands now clasped in unison. "All right," he said at last. "Let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> For the 100-tales prompt "clouds'  
> Thanks to Tinamour for the beta!
> 
> [Tumblr promo post](https://meridianrosewrites.tumblr.com/post/165266299007/no-star-shines-alone-meridianrose)


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